Seems the new Retaliation Skills were only a Pipe Dream after all...

Reading this thread, I wonder if we aren't seeing PoE Too design philosophy being backwards engineered into PoE. I don't want two PoE Toos. ='[.]'=

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Raycheetah wrote:

Reading this thread, I wonder if we aren't seeing PoE Too design philosophy being backwards engineered into PoE. I don't want two PoE Toos. ='[.]'=

They have been actively incorporating stuff designed for PoE 2 into PoE 1 for a while now. They even said way back when that they would.

Perhaps it's all a planned out strategic master move to slowly warp the game and its userbase so that once PoE 2 releases, you are more and more getting used to the idea of fully transitioning over. Perhaps it is not.

That, to me at least, would make more sense than the rather ambitious (and bold) idea that it'd be sustainable in any way, long-term, to maintain two different playerbases and develop content for both games at the same time. I just don't see this to be a viable move to make to maintain 1 brand of game.

Basically everything hinges on the success of PoE 2. If it flops, which is always a possibility, investors might pull the plug for future content because it would not be sustainable long-term. If it succeeds and allows "Path of Exile" as an "IP" to crack the 7 figure mark, then it would be a clear indicator that PoE 2 is the game people want, not PoE 1. I don't think it's viable - not saying it's impossible, big difference - to sustain two games and two crowds this way. Who knows, maybe I'll eat my words later. Wouldn't be the first time GGG managed to exceed expectations. Maybe they can pull off a miracle.

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Raycheetah wrote:

Reading this thread, I wonder if we aren't seeing PoE Too design philosophy being backwards engineered into PoE. I don't want two PoE Toos. ='[.]'=

They are just experimenting with new stuff pretty much like they did since the last decade.
Retaliation skills are just the result of something new that came out as the result with the rework of the gladiator class.

I could see them fixing them in a few ways,

Stun/interrupt immunity when attacking with them

Some sort of automation.

Duration scaling on the trigger so you can multiproc easier.

I understand that people call them "Conditional Slam Skills" or whatever, and they aren't 100% wrong. But no matter how you twist and turn things, this is a semi-new playstyle with a new approach, both when it comes to playstyle and especially when it comes to theory crafting, planning and building your character. Just because I, personally and subjectively do not (particularly) fancy the new skills, nor the playstyle associated with them, I can still view them as a valuable addition to the game, because of the previous mentioned reasons.

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Phrazz wrote:

[...] this is a semi-new playstyle with a new approach [...]

It is, and yet it is not. I guess that's why you chose to use "semi-new" instead.

I completely understand what you are saying and I actually agree, however, I feel we can compare this to, say, Grim Dawn's Retal builds. Unless it was changed since I last played, Retal would only work against melee attackers. And that was precisely why - well, also because it sucked - that the devs were forced to introduce active skills and doubled down on it, and later even expanded upon their repertoire a lot more.

While Retal is "viable", it's only in niche cases, and everywhere else it's because it just added another scaling stat for builds, i.e. x% of weapon damage + x% of Retal damage added as base damage. It suffers from the same problem: it inherently adds nothing special and is just another button press. PoE's method here follows the same pattern, except they skipped 1 step already.

If the purpose of Retal is damage, it's never gonna be interesting, unless you allow full Retal builds to be a thing (i.e. passive playstyle with huge Retal scaling but penalties to other active skills), which GGG would never let happen. See how they tend to nuke anything that is too passive in its playstyle (and actually viable).

And every Retal skill will - if there's nothing special about it - ultimately just become another DPS column/checkbox to add "include in Full DPS" in PoB. It's literally that very thing right now.

Edit: whoopsie, text fix

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

If the purpose of Retal is damage, it's never gonna be interesting, unless you allow full Retal builds to be a thing (i.e. passive playstyle with huge Retal scaling but penalties to other active skills), which GGG would never let happen. See how they tend to nuke anything that is too passive in its playstyle (and actually viable).

And every Retal skill will - if there's nothing special about it - ultimately just become another DPS column/checkbox to add "include in Full DPS" in PoB. It's literally that very thing right now.

Edit: whoopsie, text fix

I think the purpose is to create a new way of building, playing and doing damage. And I think "full Retal builds" are "a thing". Sure, they may not be META or totally competitive in the grand scheme of things, but they are a viable alternative. They did even add a way to proc them without having to block to make them more "build versatile", though I'm unsure how viable that route is.

And yes, they have been nerfing (directly or indirectly) passive builds/mechanics the last couple of years. They want PoE to be a more "active playstle" kind of game with a larger cost to convenience/passiveness, which is totally understandable, though boring for some. Nothing new, really.

I still find the new Retaliation skills way more interesting as a concept than the old Counter-Attacks. But I do wish they were instant, not to be able to automate them, but to be able to cast them while channeling other skills.

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Phrazz wrote:

They did even add a way to proc them without having to block to make them more "build versatile", though I'm unsure how viable that route is.

They did, and to quote a line from the Wiki because it's quite succinct:

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However, it can potentially cause longer delays in availability of the skill if the player can block normally; at 17% block chance or higher, you will on average be able to activate Retaliation skills more frequently than with Arsenal of Vengeance.

Currently, besides 2H non-staff builds, the only other use cases I can think of are Necromantic Aegis, or when you use an item that disables Block or has no Block chance, i.e. The Eternal Apple or Kongming's Stratagem, or when map mods effectively nullify your Block chance.

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Phrazz wrote:

I still find the new Retaliation skills way more interesting as a concept than the old Counter-Attacks. But I do wish they were instant, not to be able to automate them, but to be able to cast them while channeling other skills.

Here's the thing, though: Counterattacks previously were instant and they mostly had the same trigger conditions. Reckoning and Riposte required a blocked hit while either holding a shield or dual wielding. Vengeance was the only exception with an actual "when hit" condition that could be triggered by self-inflicted damage, but it also had the longest cooldown. They all just dealt a lot less damage.

Before the removal of alt quality gems, they could also gain Rage on Hit and Onslaught on Hit from quality. Meaning, they actually served a purpose, in particular with the mastery, where you could get Rage, Onslaught and Debilitate in one neat package that basically required 4 sockets (3 at the very least, 4 for Life Gain on Hit or Maim). Seems not like much, but we also had to use Totems and other buffs. 4 sockets and some passives was a lot, but a fair tradeoff.

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BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

And every Retal skill will - if there's nothing special about it - ultimately just become another DPS column/checkbox to add "include in Full DPS" in PoB. It's literally that very thing right now.

Except it's not as you can already create fully viable Retaliation skill builds to run your every day content. It's also worth to mention that this is the first league with this new type of skills so there's likely going to be more in the future to build even up more on the new archetype.
But it seems like you're still a bit upset because they replaced the outdated and bad idle left click simulator with something actually fun and more viable.

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Pashid wrote:

they replaced the outdated and bad idle left click simulator with something actually fun and more viable.

Wildly subjective. You can have this view but I certainly wouldn't be critical of someone else for not feeling it. Plenty of folks would love lmb back.